“Why not? That’s what Rosa thinks. She thinks a—”

“Rosa’s a child, Pita. And that story about that little girl who drowned, that’s all it is, a story, a legend—”

“Legends don’t just materialize out of thin air,” Pita said defiantly. “People don’t just make them up.”

“That’s exactly what they do. And they tell other people, and other people tell other people. There’s no such thing as ghosts, Pita. Okay?”

Pita glared at him. “What about Susana?”

Jesus opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head.

Elizaveta frowned. Susana—as in Pita’s and Jesus’s deceased younger sister? “What about Susana?” she asked.

Pita said, “She was our younger sister.”

“I know. Jesus told me what happened.”

“Did he tell you I saw her ghost when I was a kid?”

Elizaveta shook her head.

“Well, I did,” Pita said. “It wasn’t long after she drowned. I woke up in the middle of the night. She was at the bedroom window.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“Yes—sort of. Not with her mouth. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I could feel her thoughts. They were inside me. She told me she was okay. She told me not to worry about her.”

“Did you see her again?”

“No. Only that one time.”

“Huh…” Elizaveta said, not sure what else to say.

“You were a kid,” Jesus said.

“I didn’t make it up!” she snapped.

“Fine. Say you did see Susana. That’s one thing. But the ghost of a girl who died fifty years ago, haunting an island filled with dolls, killing two strangers who trespassed on it…?”

“All I’m saying,” Pita said, “is that we need to keep an open mind. We don’t know what happened, and we need to keep an open mind. Right, Eliza?”

“Yes, we should keep open mind,” she said diplomatically. “We should also wait until the others return, hear what they’ve learned, before we jump to conclusions.”

3

They returned some twenty minutes later. Pepper came first, his head ducked against the cauls of rain. Jack and Rosa followed, and finally Nitro, who carried a medium-sized canoe on his back. They were all drenched, their hair sticking to their heads, their clothes to their bodies. Elizaveta and Pita leapt to their feet and went to the hut’s door, though they remained inside, out of the downpour.

“Jack!” Pita said. “Did you find the campsite? Did you find Miguel and Lucinda? What happened to them?”

Jack wiped water from his face and pointed to a different hut maybe thirty meters away. “I’m going to take Rosa there so you guys can talk. Pepper or Nitro can tell you everything.”